e capacity of
producing anything (_arthakriyakaritva_). The form of the first
type of argument by anvayavyapti may be given thus: "Whatever
exists is momentary, by virtue of its existence, as for example
the jug; all things about the momentariness of which we are discussing
are existents and are therefore momentary." It cannot
be said that the jug which has been chosen as an example of an
existent is not momentary; for the jug is producing certain
effects at the present moment; and it cannot be held that these
are all identical in the past and the future or that it is producing
no effect at all in the past and future, for the first is impossible,
for those which are done now could not be done again in the
future; the second is impossible, for if it has any capacity to

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[Footnote: 1: See introduction to the translation of _Kathavatthu_
(_Points of Controversy_) by Mrs Rhys Davids.]

159

produce effects it must not cease doing so, as in that case one
might as well expect that there should not be any effect even at
the present moment. Whatever has the capacity of producing
anything at any time must of necessity do it. So if it does produce
at one moment and does not produce at another, this
contradiction will prove the supposition that the things were
different at the different moments. If it is held that the nature
of production varies at different moments, then also the thing at
those two moments must be different, for a thing could not have
in it two contradictory capacities.

Since the jug does not produce at the present moment the
work of the past and the future moments, it cannot evidently do
so, and hence is not identical with the jug in the past and in the
future, for the fact that the jug has the capacity and has not the
capacity as well, proves that it is not the same jug at the two
moments (_s'aktas'aktasvabhavataya pratik@sa@nam bheda@h_). The
capacity of producing effects (_arthakriyas'akti_), which is but the
other name of existence, is universally concomitant with momentariness
(_k@sa@nikatvavyapta_).

The Nyaya school of philosophy objects to this view and says
that the capacity of anything cannot be known until the effect
produced is known, and if capacity to produce effects be regarded
as existence or being, then the being or existence of the effect
cannot be known, until that has produced another effect and
that another _ad i